Matt Tolfrey - fabric 81

Matt Tolfrey - fabric 81
Matt Tolfrey seems to have a strong sense of loyalty. As owner of the Leftroom label, he gave artists like Laura Jones and Sub-ann some of their first breaks, and still supports them today. Despite leaving Nottingham for London years ago, he continued to throw parties in the city where he first made his name in the '00s as a resident at The Bomb and Stealth. And rather than turning up at any club in the capital that would have him, Tolfrey pretty much restricts his London gigs to appearances at fabric, where he's been a regular since Craig Richards first spotted him in 2004.

Tolfrey's stayed pretty faithful to his DJ style, too. By and large, he's now playing a chunkier form of house rather than the minimal techno that was once his forte, but fabric 81 still bears that genre's mark, especially in Tolfrey's technique: he swerves around any obvious breakdowns and carefully deploys his basslines rather than slamming them out. This is a set of pleasurable purring rather than orgasmic screaming—from the coquettish come-on "I have some feelings I'd like to share with you" on Rednail Kidz's "Do My Thing" through to the blend from Pure Science's "It's Magic" into Cassy's "Idle Blues," where her voice is draped across otherwise mechanistic tech house. Tolfrey pulls a decent selection of old school house out of his bag as well, nodding to his Nottingham roots with Nail's "I Think It's Love" and the DIY remix of Someone Else's "Jena Jaz." The final payoff, in the form of Soichi Terada's "Tokyo XXX," should send your endorphins bouncing.

But while fabric 81 shows the best aspects of both minimal and house, it also has some of their worst. There are sections that dawdle along when you wish they'd step up a bit, and the mix is not without a few nondescript fillers, like Phil Weeks' "Social Club." The fabric series has been a bit hit-and-miss for a while now, and while Tolfrey's contribution is much more the former, it still falls well short of must-have editions like Martyn's or Levon Vincent's. But even if it never completely blows you away, fabric 81 shows Tolfrey could do worse than stick to his guns.